Awkward
by Ishap
Summary: A J/C moment. Plus some fallout.
1. Chapter 1

It was nothing really. He just grabbed her elbow to get her attention, but the moment shifted somehow and he found himself looking at her arm, his thumb sliding down the inside of her incredibly smooth forearm. It seemed to take forever. When his thumb found the pulse-point of her wrist and he actually felt a pulse, it jarred him loose of his bizarre trance. He looked up to see her watching him intently.

"Um..." he couldn't think of what he had been about to say. 'What the hell was it?' he thought somewhat desperately and then he realized he was still holding onto her wrist. He let go swiftly and took a step back. "Ahh..."

"Is something wrong John?" she moved closer and John backed away with his hands raised.

"I-I'm fine." His backing away strategy suddenly failed him though, when he backed into an inconveniently placed wall. Cameron grabbed his chin and looked intently into his eyes, her other hand was on his chest keeping him in place.

"John, your heart-rate is elevated, you're flushed and your pupils are dilated. I'm not detecting a fever..." She trailed off because, against all the willpower he possessed, his eyes were focused on her mouth. When she stopped talking he managed to wrench his gaze away from her lips and back to her eyes, where he saw... comprehension. "Oh." She said and he felt his face heat up, but there was also anger and resentment. Underneath all of that was resignation. He stepped sideways and walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge.

"Do you want some juice?" he asked her as casually as he could manage, hoping to leave it at that.

"Yes. I would like some juice." He could feel her watching him as he poured.

"Here." He gave her a glass without looking at her and started to walk away.

"I am capable of orgasm." He heard her say; he tripped and nearly dropped his juice.

"W-What?" he asked. He knew that he had heard correctly, but his brain wasn't working well enough to come up with something else.

"Sex. It feels good for me. I wouldn't be faking." A lot of thoughts went through his head at _that_, most of which were completely unhelpful. 'You would think I would be turned off by that reminder that she isn't human; a normal person probably would be.' he thought to himself as he retreated to his room without responding.

His room felt stifling and small. With perspective, he realized that that mountain of awkward he had just climbed was similar in pattern to his usual conversations with Cameron; something happened, she had a weird take on it and he tried to explain the human reality. Only he hadn't done his part. He didn't blame himself for this though; he still had no idea what to say. 'Forget it. I am going to sleep and I'm going to pretend this never happened.' he thought to himself firmly. He looked at his bed with some reluctance.

In his dreams

Cameron only strips

To techno music

When it's dark

Cameron only plays

If there are no rules

While it lasts

Cameron only kills

if someone interrupts


	2. Chapter 2

Someone was in his room. He was awake, not asleep, but he pretended. A hand slipped under his shirt and up his side, it stroked upward slowly, then circled back and started down, this time using nails with a firm pressure that stopped a diligently calculated increment short of making marks. Then there were lips on his neck, just below his ear. The barest edge of teeth and a rippling purr that set up some interesting vibrations in his throat. 'This must be something close to what a gazelle feels just before it's throat gets ripped out.' he thought to himself.

"There isn't time right now. Sarah Connor will be awake in four minutes. She would not approve." Cameron said to him softly. He said nothing but thought: 'No, of course not... she'd want us to be married first.' The hand was removed and he heard footsteps and his door opening and closing. He took in a deep breath and let out a long sigh. His hopes that 'orgasm-gate' would be a quickly forgotten episode were gone.

Breakfast was worse.

The touching was less intimate, it is true, but it was public. She artfully disguised the occasional caress. Her hair would 'accidently' drag across his skin. Giving her her full measure of credit, Cameron's tactics would have gone unnoticed by most. Derek, however, habitually observed Cameron out of paranoia. He noticed. Finally, some critical mass was reached in his mind and he stopped eating. He stopped eating in such a way as to draw everyone's attention, making a show of putting his knife and fork on his plate.

"They say that John Connor has a girl who sits on his knee." He had their undivided attention now.

"This girl, she looks good,

but it must be understood,

that she's a little too solid

and a little too rigid.

Her hair may be lovely

and her body might be comely,

but a soul should need more

than a little metal whore."

When he was done, he left the table. His expression hadn't shown anything throughout his recitation or afterward. Sarah met John's eye for a moment, then she left as well.

"That was a poem someone made up in the future. There were others." said Cameron. John didn't know what he was feeling. But he was feeling a lot. There was definitely a lot of anger, he was sure of that much. But if he was good at anything it was compartmentalization and he was still hungry. Cameron got up, but he kept his focus on his food. She returned and placed a full glass of orange juice in front of him, he laughed shortly and involuntarily.

"This morning, what was that?" he asked, not looking at her.

"I know what you like."


	3. Chapter 3

He was agitated. Sarah caught up to him before he got to his truck.

"What was that?" She demanded.

"I don't know if i can watch this again." He wasn't looking at her and he seemed to be talking more to himself than to her.

"Derek." She moved closer, forcing him to acknowledge her.

"You're his mother, you wouldn't understand. You love him like a son. He's _John Connor_. He saved me and everyone else I know, I love him like I love oxygen and water, food and shelter." He's vehement without being loud, the intensity carried in his fervent sincerity. "And I don't think I can watch it happen again." He points at the house.

"He's attracted to her, even I can see that. But John knows what she is, he..."

"In public maybe." Derek interrupted her. "Nobody actually _saw_ anything. But we knew. John was married, you know..." he laughed shortly " will be married? would have been married? Whatever. She was beautiful... and tough. They'd been together for years when _she_ showed up. One month later, his marriage was effectively over. Nothing was official, but anyone who knew either of them knew it." He didn't mention the day he'd been walking through a rarely used tunnel and he'd heard someone crying. And how that someone was Katherine, John's wife. And how he'd wanted to be _able_ to hate John in that moment. 'Can you hate someone who keeps you alive?'

They both felt a need for silence. Taking in a beautiful morning of blue sky and warm sun, their feelings were similar.

_The world as wrapping paper,_

_A thin, colourful, deceit._

_The truth underneath might just eat,_

_your heart entire._

//--//--//

"Take off your clothes." Her fingers deftly worked her own buttons, but her eyes didn't leave him. He'd just finished his food, and his juice. 'In the Kitchen?' John thought, slightly disoriented.

"I didn't send you back here for this." John said, half to himself. "Did I?" She stopped what she was doing.

"No."

"Then why? I know, you have your own mission. But why did you do this. All of this. If it were really just to hunt down SkyNet, I would have just sent you to this time to find the me that was already here. At twenty four I'd be better able to help, wouldn't I?" His curiosity was genuine, desperate even, but his eyes still strayed to exposed, silky skin.

"SkyNet at this point in time is not just a military application. Since the interest was in creating a near-genuine intelligence, it's creator's exposed it to problems completely removed from strategic thinking. The aim was to develop creativity, a broader 'mind', since people often draw 'inspiration' from other sources, it was thought that SkyNet could do the same. One of the problems they tested it on was cancer. It developed a technique involving viral vectors and RNA resequencing that demonstrated a 95 percent cure-rate on a wide variety of advanced cancers."

"SkyNet cured cancer." John said dully, disbelieving.

"Yes, but the cure was lost during Judgment day. The Resistance found only references to it, in archives we captured from SkyNet. They contained no useful information directly relating to the cure itself, but there were dates and patient information for clinical trials."

"This is interresting... and bizarre, but it doesn't explain..."

"In the previous timeline Sarah Connor died, December 4th 2005. Cancer." There was a long silence.

"So, I wanted to save mom."

"John Connor doesn't do anything for only one reason."


	4. Chapter 4

The darker half of love, which some would call obsession,

Lives inside us all, screaming for attention.

-

_"John Connor doesn't do anything for only one reason."_ She said, and then she was silent, and they both heard the sound of Derek's truck starting.

"Is...?"

"Sarah Connor is in the truck."

"Where are they going?"

"I don't know." Her dark eyes locked with his for a long moment and then her lips curved in a slow smile. Her lower lip glistened; morning light had never bounced off of anything more appealing. She had made no move to cover what she had uncovered, her blouse still parted to reveal the beautiful fictions of her lines and contours: a magnificent neck, graceful collarbone and gentle, compelling slopes covered by wretched cotton poly-blend. The view was more than enough to drive John's thoughts from their familiar ground of math and logic back into the realm of the hot and tangible. Wordless thoughts made him get up and approach her and while the momentarily powerless cynical part of him rolled its eyes and crossed its arms, his hand skimmed over her shoulder and up her neck, his eyes never leaving hers. And then he kissed her. And then things started to escalate.

She was warm... hot even (_a heating element of some kind, like an electric stove...possibly _exactly_ like an electric stove_.)

and she tasted fantastic. (_Whatever. You're an idiot, you know that? Just riding that bus all the way to twisted town_.)

The best part was, that _nothing_ felt awkward. (_Just wait until this is over, we'll see _then_ mi compadre_...)

-

His mind was a riot,

but it went quiet,

when his hand

slipped under her waistband.

-

Tomorrow, the world might shatter,

but right now that didn't matter,

for they would soon need a **bed**

and there would be time later for dread.

//--//--//

Driving away from the house, Derek had a very strong sense of what would/was happening within. It was depressing how nothing ever changed sometimes. Even in depression there was inevitable humor though:

-

John loves a machine,

fooled by her dubious affection.

The folly of a teen!

Well, at least he won't need protection!

-

"...Nothing in the latex family anyway." He muttered to himself, lips curved very slightly upward.

"What?" asked Sarah.

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing." He replied, not looking at her.

Something was wrong though, Sarah felt it in her spine. Though she was damned if she could think of a solution. The fact was that lines in their little messed up foursome were being redrawn. And the divisions were not ones she would have ever anticipated. What was worse was that she knew that her analogy was off. It wasn't 'lines being redrawn', it was breakage.

//--//--//

What is the sound of four breaking into two and two? A breathy moan.


End file.
